After uneventful border crossing (all we could find was a survey mark on the road, which was spotted by yours truly) we headed into Deutschland, the land of sausages, beer and more sausages. At high school I learnt German until the end of the sixth form, and completed a summer exchange, so I was interested to see what language skills I had retained. After mentally rehearsing my grammar as we approached the first campground; I walked up to the desk and politely asked if they had a place for us. I was promptly replied to in English and despite my persistent faltering German continued to receive English answers. Sometimes their level of English is so good it seems they are almost embarrassed for me to hear my patchy German!
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Here lived Ernst Gans, deported 1942, direction east
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We came across these Stolperstein, small plaques throughout Europe remembering the victims of the Holocaust at the last freely chosen residence or workplace. They are designed to be in everyday environments so they can be stumbled upon by chance; keeping the memory of these atrocities in the everyday consciousness. I have recently finished reading "KL, A history of Nazi concentration camps" which is 863 pages long and took me almost four months to read, partly because its a massive book, but partly because it was too much at times and the stories were too heartbreaking to continue reading. The hate that was propagated under the Third Reich is almost unbelievable and I was interested to see how the war was commemorated in Germany, compared to to other countries we had visited.
We continued alongside the Rhein River and were both rather fascinated by the big industry that surrounded us. We had read cycle touring blogs describing this area as boring but it was so different to New Zealand, we were happy to spend a few days being impressed by big barges, smokestacks, factories, and some odd chemical smells.
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| Sneaking round the fence |
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| One of these sheep had an extra limb... |
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| Dusseldorf |
We stopped off to check out the Cologne cathedral, which still managed to impress despite having been in enough churches recently to last a lifetime. We reached the campsite on the outskirts of town to find it packed out as their was a computer gaming festival in town. Who knew! We were placed on a plot with two other cycle touring couples who were at least twice our age, but one of which took great pride in the fact he had cycled more kilometres than us that day. He then preceded to tell us the route we had planned was far inferior to the route he was doing. The other couple were lovely and told us about the cycle trip they had done through the U.S.A. when they were our age. Who knows in thirty odd years we could be either one of these couples, only time will tell!
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| Like a rocket to heaven |
We continued up the river on mostly custom-made sealed cycle tracks and began to enter the Romantic Rhein region. Although the scenery was quite nice it was a little repetitive so we put our headphones in and distracted ourselves from the heat by listening to our favorite podcasts.
We must have looked particularly disheveled that evening at camp, sitting on our tarpaulin cooking our dinner, as a German gentleman gave us some of his cold beers and a Welsh couple asked if there was anything they could do for us and offered us a hot brew. After a long day sometimes I find myself a bit jealous of the campervans around us and all the luxuries they have. It's things like a chair that you miss, sitting on the ground can get old after a while!
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| The Romantic Rhein |
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| 6000km down - We may experience some difficulties reintegrating to society |
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| View from the campsite |
We continued up the river and were surrounded by castles on the hillsides, vineyards and a really lovely stretch of river. This bit of the Rhein was definitely more touristy with lots of passenger boats cruising up and down the river.
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| Keep Dreaming |
We climbed a hill to the campsite one evening to have the owner inform us that it was "nature camping". This is just normal camping but a bit closer to a forest. We were mildly alarmed when she stressed that we should contact the staff immediately if we saw any dying animals around because they would really like to know. We wondered what kind of things were lurking in those trees, but the evening passed uneventfully.
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| I really hope the campsite's up here.... |
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Whenever I get asked if I am enjoying cycle touring and camping for this length of time my answer is definitely "yes, I would highly recommend it", but, just like life anywhere, sometimes you just have one of those days. The first sign it was going to be a flop was when we realised the cycleway on our side of the river wasn't complete. There was a detour in place that led us straight up a big hill, only to come back down only a couple of kilometres up the river, over a hour later. We then managed to negotiate a ferry crossing, eventually find a place to buy lunch (why is nothing at all open on Sundays!), and were making good progress when it started pouring with rain. It wasn't letting up and we were getting cold so decided to get a hotel for the evening. We managed to get the last room and at a hotel that was definitely not in our budget (I got the conversion rate a bit confused!). We had to sit rather sheepishly sopping wet in their rather fancy lobby while they fixed the room up. We had quite a few dirty looks from some of the staff and some of the mostly middle-aged, rather posh, guests!
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| After the detour which took us straight up a hill |
We made sure that we walked a good few hundred metres away when we went out later to cook dinner on a local park bench! We have had worse days, but we have definitely had better ones, which I guess is all part of the adventure. We triumphed in the end, by getting more than our money's worth at the buffet breakfast the next morning. We set off towards Heidelberg where we would leave the Rhein for a time on the next stage of our journey.
- Sarah
